Old Grudges
by jenncgf
Summary: Elissa and Anders discuss the only person Anders has ever declared hatred for.  One-shot.


A/N: As always, I own nothing of the Dragon Age franchise/universe. I just like to play in Bioware's backyard.

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"Maker, I hate that man."

"So you've mentioned." Elissa tilted her head to the side as she studied Anders. "It's unlike you to hate anyone. What is it about Irving that you hate so much?"

"Have you _seen_ his face?" Anders asked with a smile. "I mean, really! He may be old, but that facial hair is anything _but_ distinguished. It looks like a dire wolf puppy climbed up his robes and fell asleep on his chin." The imagery made even Elissa shudder a little bit.

Still, she wasn't going to be put off. She'd been wondering about this for a while. Sure, not everyone was a fan of mages, but by and large, most people seemed to like the First Enchanter just fine. "Uh huh," she said, her tone belying her disbelief in Anders' answer. "Try again."

Anders looked at Elissa, and with a flippant grin, tried again. "All right, all right. Would you believe me if I told you that he got all the prettiest ladies and I was jealous?"

Despite herself, Elissa laughed. "I wouldn't believe that, but mostly because I find it hard to believe that you would admit that a man three times your age was able to succeed where you had failed in the charm department."

Anders smirked. "Well, he's not _quite_ three times my age, but if you think I look that young, or that he looks that old, I'll take it." He polished his fingernails on the shoulder of his robes, then examined them idly.

"You know," Elissa warned Anders, "I did spend the entire blight with Alistair. While you're not bad at it, I have experience with men who deflect serious questions with jokes."

Anders looked at her and sighed. "You really want to know?"

Elissa nodded. "I really do. I want you to come with me the next time I recruit from the Circle, and I would appreciate knowing what we'd be up against."

Anders' face fell. "Go with you? Ugh." He tried his best puppy-dog eyes at Elissa, but being that he was a cat person, he hadn't had a lot of practice with them. Seeing that she was completely unaffected by his attempt at pathos, he gave in and started explaining.

"Well, just before my last escape, I discovered something." Anders lowered his voice and made sure nobody else was listening. He needn't have worried; Oghren was regaling the other Wardens with stories of his adventures when he first had joined Elissa's group during the blight. "I was in Irving's office, waiting for him, and he had left a journal open on his desk. I was bored so I glanced at it. I saw my name written there." He sighed and crossed his arms. "Of course, once I saw that I couldn't help but read it."

"What did you find?" Elissa looked at Anders curiously.

"I found out that Irving knew about all my escape attempts before they had happened. I don't know how, because I didn't usually plan anything with anyone else or write anything down, but he let me try to escape and then used the knowledge of my successes to block off whatever route I had taken."

Elissa winced sympathetically. "That's no fun to learn. Wait – your successes? How many unsuccessful tries did you have?"

Anders unexpectedly grinned. "I only had four tries where I never got out of the tower at all. I was pretty good at getting out. Each time I got out, I used a different means of escape."

Elissa wasn't surprised. "Well, you are pretty smart, so I can see that." Before Anders could inflate too much with pride, she added, "But I'm surprised you didn't figure out that they were blocking off the means by which you'd escaped before. We all know that you would never hurt anyone but I'm sure there were others who should definitely not have left that tower."

"I'm not surprised, or even upset, that they had figured out how I had gotten out and blocked those exits off," Anders explained. "The problem was that Irving knew I was going to escape and used me, and I didn't know about it." He frowned, an uncharacteristic expression for his face. "The worst part was he figured out my punishments before I'd even left, and even went so far as to have people outside the tower look for me to bring be back in. And none of that would have been that bad if he didn't _also_ encourage the mages into complacency. Maker, some of those mages who had been there forever? They were like lambs, only moving when they were told to do so! So many of them were dead already, and just didn't know it yet." He shook his head. "I wasn't at all surprised when I heard about how many had been lost during Uldred's rebellion. I bet most of the mages just lay down and let themselves be possessed, because they thought that they should surrender rather than fight for their home."

At this, Elissa's eyes went wide. "Encouraged docility? Just … surrendering?" She was horrified. "All that power that can be used to help people, and they threw it away?" She had trouble believing it.

"Exactly!" Anders cried, thumping a fist on the table. Nathaniel and Eric looked over at them, then shrugged and went back to listening to Oghren. "Irving was completely playing into the Chantry's desires. He did _nothing_ to help us better ourselves. I honestly expected that he only valued us for how we could teach the younger mages. The only mages he let leave the tower were the ones who convinced him that they were completely under his thumb. Most of them were idiots!"

Elissa leaned back in her chair, thinking. After a moment, she felt a slow smile come onto her face. Anders watched her with a confused expression. "That would be why I need you to come with me next time," she said as she grinned at her companion. "You can help me determine other mages who, like you, need to get out of there. We can help the mages who want to do something other than teach other mages or do research. We can get more mage Wardens and at the same time protect those who are most likely to fall foul of Irving and Greagoir."

Anders looked surprised, then a thoughtful look came over his face. "Hmm," he said, "I think that might just work. So you want to get me to help you play into Irving's schemes, but to our benefit?" He smiled as Elissa nodded. "You really do need to be in charge of everything." Back to his usual good humor, Anders excused himself and moved over to Oghren's table to harass his dwarven friend. Elissa just smiled.


End file.
